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You ask a difficult and important question. The two relevant ideas I know are: 1. Chesterton's Fence: "I don't understand why this exists, so let's tear it do

You ask a difficult and important question. The two relevant ideas I know are: 1. Chesterton's Fence: "I don't understand why this exists, so let's tear it down" is an big and tempting error. Wait until you understand. 2. Consequences of societal change are inherently unknowable, which is why revolutions usually end in tragedy. The sane approach is to change society incrementally, see what happens, and adjust and learn as you go. The educated reader may notice that 1+2 is pretty much the sane version of Conservatism. I'm not a conservative myself, but as I've grown older and wiser, I've come to understand and respect the philosophy.

tshaddox 5y ago
> Chesterton's Fence: "I don't understand why this exists, so let's tear it down" is an big and tempting error. Wait until you understand. Right, but the quote I was questioning seemed to indicate that this principle should be applied in cases where no one knows or perhaps even there is no way to know what the purpose is or even in there is one. That’s a much stronger claim than Chesterton’s fence, because a fence is at least a pretty clear indication of human intent (prevent creatures or objects of a certain size from traveling from one particular area to another), and the class of reasons to build a fence is fairly bounded and can feasibly be investigated. Also, I’m not sure how Chesterton’s fence is used in detail, but I wouldn’t agree that you must discover the original reason for the fence to justify removing it. You should investigate all the normal reasons a fence would be there, and if no extant reason turns up, tear down the fence and maybe keep an eye out for a while in case you missed something. I don’t want Chesterton’s fence to devolve all the way to the precautionary principle. Sure, maybe the fence was never needed as a traditional fence, and instead was built by ancient people because they were visited by aliens who said they will destroy Earth if there is ever not a fence in that location. Sure, that’s probably physically possible, but keeping the fence around because of that possibility is terrible epistemology.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > You should investigate all the normal reasons a fence would be there, and if no extant reason turns up, tear down the fence No, you should give up the idea that you can justify tearing down the fence by any intellectual investigation. If you really believe it would be better if the fence came down, then you need to work to convince everyone who has an interest in the fence to agree with you. If you succeed, then the fence will come down on its own without you having to force anything. And if you don't succeed, perhaps your belief that it would be better if the fence came down was wrong.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    I think you’re conflating multiple things here. As far as I know, Chesterton’s fence is not about anything like property rights. We’re not talking about justifying entering your neighbor’s land and tearing down their fence without permission. Presumably the analogy is a fence on some land you’ve just acquired, or a fence on public lands. The debate isn’t about whether you have the right to unilaterally tear down a fence, it’s about whether it’s a good idea for the fence to be removed.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > The debate isn’t about whether you have the right to unilaterally tear down a fence, it’s about whether it’s a good idea for the fence to be removed. And the point is that no individual person can figure out, just by using their own reason, whether it's a good idea for the fence to be removed. The only way to know that is for the long-winded social process of people interacting with each other to either eventually convince them that the fence should be removed, or not.
      - stale2002 5y ago
        > And the point is that no individual person can figure out That clearly doesn't apply to every argument. There are lots of times when "society" was wrong, and regular people could see that, and also aught change it. Yes, sometimes society makes makes mistakes, or, even worse, does things for fully understandable, but bad reasons.
bwestergard 5y ago
"which is why revolutions usually end in tragedy" A more judicious takeaway might be that revolutions often have tragic periods. The French revolution had its blood-soaked Terror and Thermidor, lead to the Napoleonic wars in which many perished, etc. But it also liberated millions, spread an ideal of democracy and human rights cherished by much of the world today. The U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction were in every sense a revolution against slavery. Who can deny that despite it all, this revolution was necessary, and did not go far enough in achieving its aims?
- pdonis 5y ago
  Your rosy view of the historical consequences of the French Revolution is, to say the least, questionable. I would say the main historical consequence of the French Revolution has been a lot of other revolutions which had even more tragic consequences (up to and including the ones in the 20th century that led to more than a hundred million deaths), while rosy language about "liberation" and "democracy" kept people from learning the obvious lesson that maybe revolutions just aren't a good idea. As for the Civil War, the U.S. had to spend a million lives in that war to end slavery. (And, as you appear to recognize, that still didn't really improve the lives of the former slaves all that much--more than a century of Jim Crow was still to come.) The British Empire did it without spending any lives at all, and has never had the kind of Jim Crow issues the U.S. has had. So what is the advantage of revolution, again?
  - vkou 5y ago
    The only reason we no longer live under hereditary monarchies, ruled over by privileged-by-birth nobles who are very explicitly and shamelessly above the law, is because revolutions have done a great job of either killing off those monarchs and nobles, or by scaring the surviving ones into giving up their power. I don't think you have any appreciation for how the basic rights you take for granted were a direct product of the rivers of blood shed in those struggles.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      I live in the U.S., so the basic rights I take for granted were already in place before the French Revolution. They are the result of the American Revolution, and before that the English one a century earlier. (And before that a long history of England and Britain gradually transferring power from the monarch to Parliament, going all the way back to the Magna Carta.) While neither of those revolutions were bloodless, they were a lot less bloody than the French Revolution, not to mention a lot more stable once they were done. Britain's unwritten constitution has not changed all that much since 1688 (the monarchy has continued to lose power, but it had already lost most of it by then); The U.S. Constitution is still in place; France since its revolution has had a reign of terror, an emperor, another monarchy, another revolution, and five republics. So if I were to pick a revolution or revolutions that set the pattern for guaranteeing basic rights, it would be the English and American ones, not the French one.
pdonis 5y ago
> Wait until you understand. But you might never understand; that is part of Hayek's point. Which means you can never just "tear it down". Your #2 is really the essential point.
- chii 5y ago
  But this isn't a falsify-able conjecture - if you claim that this thing could never be understood, but nevertheless essential and helpful for you, you're asking people to just put in faith. This borders on the idea of religion, rather than scientific, rational thought.
  - oldsecondhand 5y ago
    > but nevertheless essential and helpful for you, you're asking people to just put in faith Accepting that it's essential and helpful is also blind faith.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"Consequences of societal change are inherently unknowable" Let's imagine for a second that we really believe is this idea - society is in a fragile equilibrium, and any change is dangerous and could be for the worse. Well, first obvious effect is that any change regarding woman rights, etc. would not have happened the way it did. That's in line with the Conservative viewpoint. But more importantly, the society changes all the time from technology and market forces- it has changed massively with globalization, introduction of mobile phones, and social networks. Nobody talk about that! No mainstream conservatives proposes 'let's ban kids form having mobile phones and Facebook until we fully understand their effect'. So if you are not willing to apply the principle consistently, are you just using it a a charade to mask some irrational belief of personal gain? It seems hypocritical, a bit like 'pro life' people not supporting healthcare reform.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > society is in a fragile equilibrium, and any change is dangerous and could be for the worse. That's not what the GP said. He only said the consequences of societal change are unknowable. That doesn't mean we should never change society because we're afraid it will break. It means we should change society slowly, gradually, recognizing the limitations of our knowledge, instead of forming grandiose plans and trying to impose them top-down. Women's rights is actually a good example of gradually changing society. Women didn't insist all at once on changing everything they thought was wrong. It took centuries for changes relating to women's rights to happen (and they're still happening). And even then we're still figuring out how to deal with unintended consequences of those changes. But I don't think any reasonable conservative would say we shouldn't have made those changes. > society changes all the time from technology and market forces Yes, that's quite true. And we're still figuring out how to deal with unintended consequences from those changes as well. And I would say that the changes that are the most problematic in these areas are the ones resulting from some one person's top-down intentions, rather than from bottom-up evolution based on the natural interactions of many people. For example, Facebook isn't a problem because of gradual social evolution; it's a problem because Mark Zuckerberg has grandiose visions about how social media and society should work.
  - 5y ago
llbeansandrice 5y ago
Perhaps I'm being too US-centric but I feel like you at-best mean conservatism with a lower-case 'c'. Even then the very definition of conservatism explicitly avoids any change: > commitment to traditional values and ideas with opposition to change or innovation I've never known conservatism to be anything except opposition to change as that's the most conservative thing you can generally do: nothing.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  I called it "the sane version of Conservatism". There are many others. Political scientists probably have a more specific name for mine. I should learn that some day. Yeah, many people with very different ideas call themselves conservatives. > I've never known conservatism to be anything except opposition to change as that's the most conservative thing you can generally do: nothing. Have you never known conservatives wanting to lower taxes, deregulate the economy, and decentralize decision making?
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    >Have you never known conservatives wanting to lower taxes, deregulate the economy, and decentralize decision making? I know its not conservative or liberal, it depends how you look at it. Deregulation of markets was seen as liberal at one time, devolution is pretty well supported except by some that support strong central government control, and lower taxes is often seen as American conservative, instead of offering services that they skim, or taxing you and giving you back more money (lol) they just won't take it in the first place. Milton Friedman's negative income tax is a beautiful way to help the poor without sudden cutoffs for when they try to become wealthier too. I would say that these labels aren't as useful as top down control (big government, tell people what to do) or bottom up control (power to the people, let them do as they want to). Both can be useful for different reasons. The ozone hole and banning freon was top down but the tragedy of the common would mean it would never get fixed. The federal government also shouldn't raid dispensaries and prevent weed smoking.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Most conservatives I know want to decentralize decision making, lower taxes, and deregulate the economy.
Misdicorl 5y ago
Of course the big issue with the incremental change approach is getting stuck on local minima far far far away from the real good stuff
wolverine876 5y ago
> Consequences of societal change are inherently unknowable, which is why revolutions usually end in tragedy. The sane approach is to change society incrementally, see what happens, and adjust and learn as you go. > The educated reader may notice that 1+2 is pretty much the sane version of Conservatism. Incremental slow change sounds good if you are reasonably happy with the current situation. If you children are getting killed, beaten, and imprisoned by the legal system, and have no access to good education, you might want to move a little quicker.
- ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
  > If you children are getting killed, beaten, and imprisoned by the legal system, and have no access to good education, you might want to move a little quicker. "People are suffering now" is not a good blanket argument for rapid change. First, it needs to be shown that the changes proposed will not be worse than the original condition. To use your example, last summer many people were arguing for quickly defunding the police. While that would certainly solve the problem of children suffering under the legal system, it might also result in vigilante groups stepping up to enforce the law, or in increased urban gang activity, or in increased domestic violence, any of which might end up with increased overall victimization of children. My personal opinion is that individual jurisdictions should experiment more at a small scale. Maybe SF abolishes the police, and Minneapolis increases funding for social work, and the Chicago police install robocops at every corner, and Nashville provides benefits only to families which stay intact. Then after two years it will be obvious which policies _really_ don't work, and after five years there will be a good handle on the set of policies that might work, and after fourty years most of the magnitudes of the possible second- and third-order effects will be understood, at least as well as it is possible to know them. But it is impossible to have local experiments when the popular call is for immediate action on the national level. Alas, one is left with digging through the archves of history and trying to see where natural experiments have been done, and what confounding variables there were.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    > First, it needs to be shown that the changes proposed will not be worse than the original condition. I'm not sure this is always true. Or at least, it is important to specify what confidence you demand here. If you demand an infinite regress of dissertations before taking any action, you can perform a denial of service attack on all progress. Almost any policy change can have chaotic and unpredictable effects and demanding flawless prediction of the outcome is demanding the impossible. And further, "some bad outcome will come from this change" should not be sufficient to stop progress. You cannot make perfect be the enemy of good, and net progress can be achieved even if there are some things that regress with a new policy. At almost every step of major social progress, agitators were told that they were unruly and moving too fast. In hindsight, can we really say that women's liberation or civil rights or gay rights movements actually moved too quickly? We can even have a historical example of aggression being more effective than respectability politics. Women's rights movements largely failed in the late 19th century and it wasn't until the "disrespectful" suffragette movement ("suffragette" was a derogatory term to contrast with the more respectful activists of the prior generation) that real progress was made.

tshaddox 5y ago

> Chesterton's Fence: "I don't understand why this exists, so let's tear it down" is an big and tempting error. Wait until you understand. Right, but the quote I was questioning seemed to indicate that this principle should be applied in cases where no one knows or perhaps even there is no way to know what the purpose is or even in there is one. That’s a much stronger claim than Chesterton’s fence, because a fence is at least a pretty clear indication of human intent (prevent creatures or objects of a certain size from traveling from one particular area to another), and the class of reasons to build a fence is fairly bounded and can feasibly be investigated. Also, I’m not sure how Chesterton’s fence is used in detail, but I wouldn’t agree that you must discover the original reason for the fence to justify removing it. You should investigate all the normal reasons a fence would be there, and if no extant reason turns up, tear down the fence and maybe keep an eye out for a while in case you missed something. I don’t want Chesterton’s fence to devolve all the way to the precautionary principle. Sure, maybe the fence was never needed as a traditional fence, and instead was built by ancient people because they were visited by aliens who said they will destroy Earth if there is ever not a fence in that location. Sure, that’s probably physically possible, but keeping the fence around because of that possibility is terrible epistemology.

pdonis 5y ago
> You should investigate all the normal reasons a fence would be there, and if no extant reason turns up, tear down the fence No, you should give up the idea that you can justify tearing down the fence by any intellectual investigation. If you really believe it would be better if the fence came down, then you need to work to convince everyone who has an interest in the fence to agree with you. If you succeed, then the fence will come down on its own without you having to force anything. And if you don't succeed, perhaps your belief that it would be better if the fence came down was wrong.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  I think you’re conflating multiple things here. As far as I know, Chesterton’s fence is not about anything like property rights. We’re not talking about justifying entering your neighbor’s land and tearing down their fence without permission. Presumably the analogy is a fence on some land you’ve just acquired, or a fence on public lands. The debate isn’t about whether you have the right to unilaterally tear down a fence, it’s about whether it’s a good idea for the fence to be removed.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > The debate isn’t about whether you have the right to unilaterally tear down a fence, it’s about whether it’s a good idea for the fence to be removed. And the point is that no individual person can figure out, just by using their own reason, whether it's a good idea for the fence to be removed. The only way to know that is for the long-winded social process of people interacting with each other to either eventually convince them that the fence should be removed, or not.
    - stale2002 5y ago
      > And the point is that no individual person can figure out That clearly doesn't apply to every argument. There are lots of times when "society" was wrong, and regular people could see that, and also aught change it. Yes, sometimes society makes makes mistakes, or, even worse, does things for fully understandable, but bad reasons.

bwestergard 5y ago

"which is why revolutions usually end in tragedy" A more judicious takeaway might be that revolutions often have tragic periods. The French revolution had its blood-soaked Terror and Thermidor, lead to the Napoleonic wars in which many perished, etc. But it also liberated millions, spread an ideal of democracy and human rights cherished by much of the world today. The U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction were in every sense a revolution against slavery. Who can deny that despite it all, this revolution was necessary, and did not go far enough in achieving its aims?

pdonis 5y ago
Your rosy view of the historical consequences of the French Revolution is, to say the least, questionable. I would say the main historical consequence of the French Revolution has been a lot of other revolutions which had even more tragic consequences (up to and including the ones in the 20th century that led to more than a hundred million deaths), while rosy language about "liberation" and "democracy" kept people from learning the obvious lesson that maybe revolutions just aren't a good idea. As for the Civil War, the U.S. had to spend a million lives in that war to end slavery. (And, as you appear to recognize, that still didn't really improve the lives of the former slaves all that much--more than a century of Jim Crow was still to come.) The British Empire did it without spending any lives at all, and has never had the kind of Jim Crow issues the U.S. has had. So what is the advantage of revolution, again?
- vkou 5y ago
  The only reason we no longer live under hereditary monarchies, ruled over by privileged-by-birth nobles who are very explicitly and shamelessly above the law, is because revolutions have done a great job of either killing off those monarchs and nobles, or by scaring the surviving ones into giving up their power. I don't think you have any appreciation for how the basic rights you take for granted were a direct product of the rivers of blood shed in those struggles.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    I live in the U.S., so the basic rights I take for granted were already in place before the French Revolution. They are the result of the American Revolution, and before that the English one a century earlier. (And before that a long history of England and Britain gradually transferring power from the monarch to Parliament, going all the way back to the Magna Carta.) While neither of those revolutions were bloodless, they were a lot less bloody than the French Revolution, not to mention a lot more stable once they were done. Britain's unwritten constitution has not changed all that much since 1688 (the monarchy has continued to lose power, but it had already lost most of it by then); The U.S. Constitution is still in place; France since its revolution has had a reign of terror, an emperor, another monarchy, another revolution, and five republics. So if I were to pick a revolution or revolutions that set the pattern for guaranteeing basic rights, it would be the English and American ones, not the French one.

pdonis 5y ago

> Wait until you understand. But you might never understand; that is part of Hayek's point. Which means you can never just "tear it down". Your #2 is really the essential point.

chii 5y ago
But this isn't a falsify-able conjecture - if you claim that this thing could never be understood, but nevertheless essential and helpful for you, you're asking people to just put in faith. This borders on the idea of religion, rather than scientific, rational thought.
- oldsecondhand 5y ago
  > but nevertheless essential and helpful for you, you're asking people to just put in faith Accepting that it's essential and helpful is also blind faith.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

"Consequences of societal change are inherently unknowable" Let's imagine for a second that we really believe is this idea - society is in a fragile equilibrium, and any change is dangerous and could be for the worse. Well, first obvious effect is that any change regarding woman rights, etc. would not have happened the way it did. That's in line with the Conservative viewpoint. But more importantly, the society changes all the time from technology and market forces- it has changed massively with globalization, introduction of mobile phones, and social networks. Nobody talk about that! No mainstream conservatives proposes 'let's ban kids form having mobile phones and Facebook until we fully understand their effect'. So if you are not willing to apply the principle consistently, are you just using it a a charade to mask some irrational belief of personal gain? It seems hypocritical, a bit like 'pro life' people not supporting healthcare reform.

pdonis 5y ago
> society is in a fragile equilibrium, and any change is dangerous and could be for the worse. That's not what the GP said. He only said the consequences of societal change are unknowable. That doesn't mean we should never change society because we're afraid it will break. It means we should change society slowly, gradually, recognizing the limitations of our knowledge, instead of forming grandiose plans and trying to impose them top-down. Women's rights is actually a good example of gradually changing society. Women didn't insist all at once on changing everything they thought was wrong. It took centuries for changes relating to women's rights to happen (and they're still happening). And even then we're still figuring out how to deal with unintended consequences of those changes. But I don't think any reasonable conservative would say we shouldn't have made those changes. > society changes all the time from technology and market forces Yes, that's quite true. And we're still figuring out how to deal with unintended consequences from those changes as well. And I would say that the changes that are the most problematic in these areas are the ones resulting from some one person's top-down intentions, rather than from bottom-up evolution based on the natural interactions of many people. For example, Facebook isn't a problem because of gradual social evolution; it's a problem because Mark Zuckerberg has grandiose visions about how social media and society should work.
- 5y ago

llbeansandrice 5y ago

Perhaps I'm being too US-centric but I feel like you at-best mean conservatism with a lower-case 'c'. Even then the very definition of conservatism explicitly avoids any change: > commitment to traditional values and ideas with opposition to change or innovation I've never known conservatism to be anything except opposition to change as that's the most conservative thing you can generally do: nothing.

BurningFrog 5y ago
I called it "the sane version of Conservatism". There are many others. Political scientists probably have a more specific name for mine. I should learn that some day. Yeah, many people with very different ideas call themselves conservatives. > I've never known conservatism to be anything except opposition to change as that's the most conservative thing you can generally do: nothing. Have you never known conservatives wanting to lower taxes, deregulate the economy, and decentralize decision making?
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  >Have you never known conservatives wanting to lower taxes, deregulate the economy, and decentralize decision making? I know its not conservative or liberal, it depends how you look at it. Deregulation of markets was seen as liberal at one time, devolution is pretty well supported except by some that support strong central government control, and lower taxes is often seen as American conservative, instead of offering services that they skim, or taxing you and giving you back more money (lol) they just won't take it in the first place. Milton Friedman's negative income tax is a beautiful way to help the poor without sudden cutoffs for when they try to become wealthier too. I would say that these labels aren't as useful as top down control (big government, tell people what to do) or bottom up control (power to the people, let them do as they want to). Both can be useful for different reasons. The ozone hole and banning freon was top down but the tragedy of the common would mean it would never get fixed. The federal government also shouldn't raid dispensaries and prevent weed smoking.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Most conservatives I know want to decentralize decision making, lower taxes, and deregulate the economy.

Misdicorl 5y ago

Of course the big issue with the incremental change approach is getting stuck on local minima far far far away from the real good stuff

wolverine876 5y ago

> Consequences of societal change are inherently unknowable, which is why revolutions usually end in tragedy. The sane approach is to change society incrementally, see what happens, and adjust and learn as you go. > The educated reader may notice that 1+2 is pretty much the sane version of Conservatism. Incremental slow change sounds good if you are reasonably happy with the current situation. If you children are getting killed, beaten, and imprisoned by the legal system, and have no access to good education, you might want to move a little quicker.

ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
> If you children are getting killed, beaten, and imprisoned by the legal system, and have no access to good education, you might want to move a little quicker. "People are suffering now" is not a good blanket argument for rapid change. First, it needs to be shown that the changes proposed will not be worse than the original condition. To use your example, last summer many people were arguing for quickly defunding the police. While that would certainly solve the problem of children suffering under the legal system, it might also result in vigilante groups stepping up to enforce the law, or in increased urban gang activity, or in increased domestic violence, any of which might end up with increased overall victimization of children. My personal opinion is that individual jurisdictions should experiment more at a small scale. Maybe SF abolishes the police, and Minneapolis increases funding for social work, and the Chicago police install robocops at every corner, and Nashville provides benefits only to families which stay intact. Then after two years it will be obvious which policies _really_ don't work, and after five years there will be a good handle on the set of policies that might work, and after fourty years most of the magnitudes of the possible second- and third-order effects will be understood, at least as well as it is possible to know them. But it is impossible to have local experiments when the popular call is for immediate action on the national level. Alas, one is left with digging through the archves of history and trying to see where natural experiments have been done, and what confounding variables there were.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  > First, it needs to be shown that the changes proposed will not be worse than the original condition. I'm not sure this is always true. Or at least, it is important to specify what confidence you demand here. If you demand an infinite regress of dissertations before taking any action, you can perform a denial of service attack on all progress. Almost any policy change can have chaotic and unpredictable effects and demanding flawless prediction of the outcome is demanding the impossible. And further, "some bad outcome will come from this change" should not be sufficient to stop progress. You cannot make perfect be the enemy of good, and net progress can be achieved even if there are some things that regress with a new policy. At almost every step of major social progress, agitators were told that they were unruly and moving too fast. In hindsight, can we really say that women's liberation or civil rights or gay rights movements actually moved too quickly? We can even have a historical example of aggression being more effective than respectability politics. Women's rights movements largely failed in the late 19th century and it wasn't until the "disrespectful" suffragette movement ("suffragette" was a derogatory term to contrast with the more respectful activists of the prior generation) that real progress was made.